Opinion Recap: Engquist v. Oregon Dept. of Agriculture

Recent Stanford Law School graduate Andrew Dawson penned this entry on Monday’s decision in Engquist.

In an opinion authored by Chief Justice Roberts, the Supreme Court on Monday held that a class-of-one theory of equal protection does not apply in the public employment context.

At issue in Engquist v. Oregon Department of Agriculture were a public employee's allegations that she had been "arbitrarily treated differently from other similarly situated employees," and that such treatment gave rise to a class-of-one equal protection claim. A jury awarded Engquist damages based on that claim, but the Ninth Circuit reversed, finding such a claim inappropriate in the public employment context. The Supreme Court agreed with the Ninth Circuit below, rejecting Engquist's argument that the Court's per curiam holding in Village of Willowbrook v. Olech (2000) should be extended to public employment cases. While agreeing that the protection of the Equal Protection Clause applies to the government when it acts as an employer, the Supreme Court declined to extend that protection to class-of-one claims.

Noting the Court's previous recognition that the government's powers are broader when it acts as an employer rather than a sovereign, the Court focused on the particular balance of interests at play in the employment context. In particular, the Court analogized to First Amendment cases concerning speech by public employees. Quoting Connick v. Myers, Chief Justice Roberts noted that "a federal court is not the appropriate forum in which to review the wisdom of a personnel decision taken by a public agency allegedly in reaction to the employee's behavior."

Moving on to the specific Equal Protection claim at stake, the Court rejected Engquist's argument that Olech opened the door to class-of-one claims in the public employment context. The Court construed Olech's reach narrowly, noting that it was "not . . . a departure from the principle that the Equal Protection Clause is concerned with arbitrary government classification." The Court further noted that in Olech there had been a clear standard against which allegedly discriminatory government action could be measured. The Court distinguished the facts of Engquist, describing it in contrast to Olech as a "form[] of state action . . . which by [its] nature involve[s] discretionary decisionmaking based on a vast array of subjective, individualized assessments." In such a context, "allowing a challenge based on the arbitrary singling out of a particular person would undermine the very discretion that such state officials are entrusted to exercise." The Court was careful to point out that class-based decisionmaking in public employment may still give rise to an Equal Protection claim.

Justice Stevens, joined by Justices Souter and Ginsburg, dissented. The dissenting justices disagreed with the majority's pragmatic concerns, suggesting instead that the majority's holding "creates a new substantive rule excepting state employees from the Fourteenth Amendment's protection against unequal and irrational treatment at the hands of the State."

The dissenting opinion presented a different view of Olech, suggesting its holding "was dictated solely by the absence of a rational basis for the discrimination." Under such a reading, suggests the dissent, Engquist's claim that her treatment was arbitrary and irrational is sufficient to state a claim. The dissent also rejected the majority's concern about the inherently discretionary nature of employment decisions, noting that there is a distinction between the exercise of discretion and an arbitrary decision. While the Equal Protection Clause would not hinder a rational exercise of discretion, argued the dissent, it should prevent decisions unsupported by any rational basis.

Merits Case Pages and Archives

The court issued additional orders from the December 2 conference on Monday. The court did not grant any new cases or call for the views of the solicitor general in any cases. On Tuesday, the court released its opinions in three cases. The court also heard oral arguments on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The calendar for the December sitting is available on the court's website. On Friday the justices met for their December 9 conference; Honeycutt v. United States.

Major Cases

Gloucester County School Board v. G.G.(1) Whether courts should extend deference to an unpublished agency letter that, among other things, does not carry the force of law and was adopted in the context of the very dispute in which deference is sought; and (2) whether, with or without deference to the agency, the Department of Education's specific interpretation of Title IX and 34 C.F.R. § 106.33, which provides that a funding recipient providing sex-separated facilities must “generally treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity,” should be given effect.

Bank of America Corp. v. City of Miami(1) Whether, by limiting suit to “aggrieved person[s],” Congress required that a Fair Housing Act plaintiff plead more than just Article III injury-in-fact; and (2) whether proximate cause requires more than just the possibility that a defendant could have foreseen that the remote plaintiff might ultimately lose money through some theoretical chain of contingencies.

Moore v. Texas(1) Whether it violates the Eighth Amendment and this Court’s decisions in Hall v. Florida and Atkins v. Virginia to prohibit the use of current medical standards on intellectual disability, and require the use of outdated medical standards, in determining whether an individual may be executed.

Pena-Rodriguez v. ColoradoWhether a no-impeachment rule constitutionally may bar evidence of racial bias offered to prove a violation of the Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury.

Conference of December 9, 2016

FTS USA, LLC v. Monroe (1) Whether the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Due Process Clause permit a collective action to be certified and tried to verdict based on testimony from a small subset of the putative plaintiffs, without either any statistical or other similarly reliable showing that the experiences of those who testified are typical and can reliably be extrapolated to the entire class, or a jury finding that the testifying witnesses are representative of the absent plaintiffs; and (2) whether the procedure for determining damages upheld by the Sixth Circuit, in which the district court unilaterally determined damages without any jury finding, violates the Seventh Amendment.

Overton v. United States Whether, consistent with this Court's Brady v. Maryland jurisprudence, a court may require a defendant to demonstrate that suppressed evidence “would have led the jury to doubt virtually everything” about the government's case in order to establish that the evidence is material.

Turner v. United States (1) Whether, under Brady v. Maryland, courts may consider information that arises after trial in determining the materiality of suppressed evidence; and (2) whether, in a case where no physical evidence inculpated petitioners, the prosecution's suppression of information that included the identification of a plausible alternative perpetrator violated petitioners' due process rights under Brady.